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This  book  belonged  to  Chauncey  Wetmore  Wells.  He  taught  in 
Yale  College,  of  which  he  was  a  graduate,  from  1897  to  1901,  and 
from  1 90 1  to  1933  at  this  University. 

Chauncey  Wells  was,  essentially,  a  scholar.  The  range  of  his  read- 
ing was  wide,  the  breadth  of  his  literary  sympathy  as  uncommon 
as  the  breadth  of  his  human  sympathy.  He  was  less  concerned 
with  the  collection  of  facts  than  with  meditation  upon  their  sig- 
nificance. His  distinctive  power  lay  in  his  ability  to  give  to  his 
students  a  subtle  perception  of  the  inner  implications  of  form, 
of  manners,  of  taste,  of  the  really  disciplined  and  discriminating 
mind.  And  this  perception  appeared  not  only  in  his  thinking  and 
teaching  but  also  in  all  his  relations  with  books  and  with  men. 


HE  FACE  AND  THE  CROSS 


http://www.archive.org/details/facecrossbaccalaOOwellrich 


r 


THE  FACE  AND  THE  CROSS 

A  Baccalaureate  Sermon  preached 

at  Delaware  College  Newark 

Delaware  June  161901 

also  at  Christ  Church 

Waltham 

Massachusetts 

November  \o  1901  fry  the 

Reverend  Hubert  Wetmore  Wells 

Rector  of  Saint  Andrew* s 

Church  Wilmington 

Delaware 


BOSTON 
DAMRELL  AND  UPHAM 

1901 


PUBLISHED  AT  THE  REQUEST  OF  OLD  FRIENDS 
IN  WALTHAM 


IN*  MEMORIAL 


•  •  •       •  • 

•  •••••  • 

•  i  .*. •  « 

••••••#  •#••  •  • 

•  •  •  •  «• . « 


"THEY  SAT  AND  WATCHED  HIM 
THERE."  ST.  MATTHEW  XXVII.  36. 

THE  place  is  Golgotha,  the  watchers  are 
the  "soldiers  of  the  Governor,"  and  Him 
they  watch  is  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  Near  by,  one 
on  either  side  of  Jesus'  cross,  are  other  two  con- 
demned and  crucified :  these  are  not  watched.  It 
is  not  the  crosses  lifted  from  the  hill;  it  is  not  the 
fear  "lest  His  disciples  should  come  and  steal  Him 
away;"  it  is  not  the  gravity  of  His  crime;  it  is  not 
the  assembled  and  accusing  multitude ;  it  is  not 
the  presence  of  Jewish  dignitaries,  that  moves  this 
little  guard  of  Pilate's  soldiery  to  look  at  the  Cen- 
tral Figure  in  this  group  of  three  rather  than  at 
the  rest.  By  the  hard  custom  of  their  business  the 
executioners  were  indifferent  to  all  this.  Deci- 
sions of  courts,  and  the  wild  people's  tumult,  and 
flocking  curiosity  were  to  them  as  the  idle  wind, 
and  by  them  unrespected.  What,  then,  beckoned 
them  out  of  their  accustomed  indifference  and 
fixed  their  eyes  on  Him4?  I  think  it  was  His  face. 
Have  you  ever  studied  faces'?  Unconsciously 
every  man  studies  faces.  Not  at  his  hands  and  feet, 

3 


863675 


but  into  his  face  we  look  when  we  put  the  man  a 
question  or  make  the  man  an  answer.  The  motion 
is  instinctive,  and  we  all  use  it.  But  we  do  not  all 
reflect  upon  the  habit  and  the  instinct  and  follow 
it  on  to  its  revealing  conclusions.  A  face  is  a  mar- 
velous thing.  From  it  a  man's  soul  looks  out  into 
life.  There  are  long  hours,  and  days  together, 
when  the  tenant  will  not  venture  to  the  window. 
He  is  ashamed,  or  afraid,  or  morbid,  or  too  much 
given  to  think  upon  himself,  and  so  he  comes  not 
to  the  window.  Something  of  the  man  may  be 
guessed  from  his  absence  there.  And  when  he 
comes  he  does  not  come  ingenuously  always,  and 
under  his  smiles  some  dark  particular  motive  lies 
concealed.  But  there  are  moments,  and  they  most 
frequent,  when  the  unguarded  spirit  shows  itself, 
and  in  the  man's  face  you  may  see  the  man. 
Purity,  integrity,  sobriety,  chivalry  creep  into  the 
face  and  change  and  hallow  all  the  features.  Lust 
and  dishonor  and  laxity  and  selfishness  cannot  be 
kept  forever  out  of  it ;  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
the  absence  of  the  things  we  long  to  see  there  is 
the  sure  sign  of  a  battle  unattempted  or  of  a  battle 
lost:  the  man  has  never  mastered  the  great  vir- 

4 


tues  to  make  them  his,  or  he  has  welcomed  the 
great  vices  and  they  have  made  him  theirs.  A 
face  is  a  marvelous  thing. 

Marvelous,  then,  must  have  been  the  face  of 
Jesus.  For  the  characteristic  of  Jesus  is  that  He 
reveals.  His  spirit  never  leaves  the  window,  but 
suns  itself  there  all  the  day.  He  has  nothing  to 
conceal.  He  has  so  vastly  much  to  declare.  We 
do  not  appreciate  how  very  large  a  part  the  face 
of  Jesus  plays  in  that  delineation  of  His  charac- 
ter which  we  find  in  the  Gospels.  The  author  of 
the  second  Gospel,  with  his  wonderful  eyes,  is 
never  tired  of  telling  us  what  he  sees  in  Jesus' 
face.  In  it  His  great  soul  lived.  His  anger,  His 
compassion,  His  serenity,  His  high-souled  reso- 
lution all  were  visible  to  the  disciple  that  watched 
His  every  motion  and  heard  His  every  word. 
Chapter  after  chapter  in  that  second  Gospel  might 
appropriately  be  named  "  A  study  of  the  face  of 
Christ."  The  tradition  of  that  face  is  preserved  in 
Saint  Paul's  phrase  forever.  Men  looked  into  that 
face  and  saw  "  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of  the 
glory  of  God : "  the  vision  of  God's  glory — there 
it  shone  "in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ."  And  as  those 

5 


soldiers  sat  and  watched  Him  there,  it  was  His  face 
they  watched  —  the  face  that  made  a  glory  above 
His  limp  and  broken  figure. 

Let  us  sit  with  them  there  to-night  and  watch 
Him  for  a  season.  What  shall  we  see  ?  A  face  upon 
a  cross.  If  we  look  from  the  face  to  the  wooden 
thing  on  which  it  hangs,  we  shall  see  darkness  only; 
if  we  look  from  the  cross  to  the  face,  we  shall  see 
light  alone.  There  in  the  two  objects  that  the  eyes 
observe  is  the  picture  of  a  conflict  between  two 
views  of  life,  and  the  symbols  of  two  opinions  as 
to  the  issue  of  that  conflict.  The  cross  is  the  sym- 
bol of  the  existing  order.  The  face  is  the  symbol 
of  the  order  of  God.  Pilate  and  the  Jews,  who 
represented  then  the  existing  order,  thought  that 
they  had  done  with  Jesus  because  they  crucified 
Him.  They  held  the  common  superstition  touch- 
ing death,  that  dead  things  have  an  end.  And  so 
over  the  dying  Christ  they  wrote  that  He  had  tried 
and  failed:  "Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  king  of  the 
Jews."  For  the  order  of  God  Jesus  stood  alone. 
Death  could  not  cloud  His  vision.  In  God's  econ- 
omy death  had  for  Him  its  place,  but  death  did 
not  deceive  Him.  He  saw  in  death  the  low  begin- 

6 


nings  of  a  larger  life.  Death,  for  the  existing  or- 
der, was  the  last  resort.  For  Jesus  death  was  just 
the  way  of  life ;  and  from  the  face  of  Jesus  on  His 
cross  shone  down  the  glory  born  of  an  assurance, 
deep  as  soul,  that  He  had  won. 

Which  of  the  two  is  right,  Pilate  or  Christ,  the 
cross  or  Jesus'  face  ?  As  we  ask  this  question 
comes  the  reflection  that  we  have  been  born  into 
the  existing  order,  that  we  think  very  largely  as 
it  has  taught  us  to  think,  that  we  aim  for  the 
things  which  it  sets  on  high,  and  that  we  cannot 
altogether  escape  aiming  for  them.  Our  real  ideals, 
beliefs,  and  opinions  are  patent  in  conduct  and  to 
conduct  we  must  go  to  discover  them.  Vaporings 
about  Jesus'  success  come  to  nothing.  The  hymns 
we  sing  and  the  prayers  we  pray  and  the  phrases 
we  adopt  on  Sunday  morning  are  not  the  declara- 
tion most  searching  and  desirable  as  to  what  we 
really  think  of  the  conflict  between  the  existing 
order  and  Jesus.  Go  Monday  morning  to  the 
banker,  the  merchant,  the  mechanic,  the  laborer, 
and  let  the  man's  work  answer  for  the  man.  The- 
ological opinion  turned  into  theological  phrase 
matters  much  or  matters  little :  that  depends.  But 

7 


vital  opinion  declared  by  living  matters  a  great 
deal,  and  the  vital  opinion  of  the  existing  order 
says,  as  of  old  it  said,  that  Jesus  was  and  is  a  fail- 
ure :  the  dark,  stern  cross  has  conquered  the  sweet 
face. 

When  we  meet  the  assertion,  relieved  of  reli- 
gious bias,  there  is  a  large  measure  of  truth  in 
this  contention.  There  are  two  ways  in  which  a 
man  may  fail :  he  may  fail  because  his  aim  —  the 
thing  he  tries  to  hit  —  is  judged  to  be  other  than 
it  is ;  and  he  may  fail  because  he  actually  misses 
the  thing  he  really  tries  to  do.  The  great  majority 
of  Jesus'  countrymen  misjudged  His  aim.  He 
never  succeeded  in  freeing  their  minds  from  the 
thought  that  he  should  be  their  king.  His  reluc- 
tance was  endured  for  a  season,  but  there  came  a 
time  when  their  chafing  impatience  broke  the 
bonds  of  reverent  restraint,  and  they  determined 
to  force  the  kingdom  upon  Him.  He  had  waited 
for  a  propitious  moment  possibly,  for  a  strong,  in- 
dubitable backing.  They  knew  their  strength  far 
better  than  did  He.  Now  was  the  time.  So  they 
sought  to  take  Him  by  force  and  make  Him  a 
king.  Jesus  withdrew,  but  His  withdrawal  did 

8 


not  convince  them.  Perhaps  they  had  been  a  little 
hasty:  they  could  wait.  But  by  and  by,  thought 
they,  the  hour  would  strike  and  their  king  would 
come  to  his  own.  If  anything  in  the  Gospels  is 
clear,  it  is  this  misconception.  Nor  did  it  stop  with 
the  tumultuous  people :  the  disciples  were  fully 
persuaded  of  it.  They  walked  habitual  witnesses 
to  the  exercise  of  the  extraordinary  power  that 
Jesus  surely  possessed.  Such  power  was  both  a 
sign  and  a  guarantee — sign  of 'his  kingly  origin 
and  office  and  destiny;  guarantee  of  a  throne's 
possession.  The  cautioning  word  "  See  thou  tell 
no  man"  was  vainly  uttered.  The  knit  brow  and 
lifted  finger  made  their  stern  charge  in  vain.  The 
Twelve  clung  to  their  delusion  to  the  last.  After 
the  experience  on  the  Mount,  after  the  prophecy 
of  suffering  imminent,  after  the  personal  seclusion 
and  confidence  of  the  last  northern  journey,  came 
the  mother  of  James  and  John  asking  for  them 
political  favors :  "  Command  that  these  my  two 
sons  may  sit,  one  on  Thy  right  hand,  and  one  on 
Thy  left:  hand,  in  Thy  kingdom."  The  only  quar- 
rel recorded  of  the  Twelve  is  most  significant  in 
the  light  it  throws  upon  their  thought  of  Jesus.  It 

9 


happened,  as  did  Salome's  request  for  her  sons' 
preferment,  after  the  explicit  foretelling  of  per- 
sonal disaster,  and  as  they  journeyed  towards  Jeru- 
salem. What  was  it  all  about?  Who  was  to  have 
the  highest  position  in  the  new  government !  The 
miserable  fiasco  which  we  call  the  "triumphal  en- 
try" must  have  been  a  rude  shock  to  this  state  of 
mind,  but  it  could  not  dislodge  the  expectation. 
"  Lord,"  ask  they,  "  wilt  Thou  at  this  time  restore 
the  kingdom  to  Israel?"  About  the  fact  there  is 
for  them  no  doubt.  Only  the  manner  of  it  and  the 
hour  is  doubtful. 

The  story  and  the  character  of  Judas  are  many- 
sided.  One  side  concerns  us  in  the  present  connec- 
tion. This  shrewd  bargainer  from  Kerioth  was  an 
office-seeker.  He  had  watched  his  Master  let  slip 
so  many  golden  opportunities.  Then  came  the 
great  procession  into  Jerusalem,  and  to  the  crowd 
awaiting  the  fatal  word  only  a  long,  compassion- 
ate look,  and  then  withdrawal.  I  believe  that  that 
experience  convinced  Judas  of  his  mistake  and 
that  what  followed  was  the  logical  result  of  the 
broken  hopes  of  the  office-seeker.  But  it  all  goes 
to  show  how  persistent  was  the  misconception  of 

10 


the  Twelve,  and  just  what  they  expected  of  Him. 
With  a  "kingdom  not  of  this  world"  the  traitor 
had  no  concern.  His  betrayal  is  at  once  <  tribute 
to  his  perspicacity  and  a  revelation  of  the  motive 
of  his  discipleship.  In  his  opinion  Jesus  was  a 
failure,  and  in  this  opinion  they  all  shared  when 
they  forsook  Him  and  fled. 

Over  against  many  a  name  in  the  long  roll  of 
history  has  the  generation  in  which  it  lived  and 
worked  written  an  adverse  judgment,  because  the 
high  soul  had  seen  the  heavenly  vision  and  dared 
not  disobey.  Does  it  matter?  Yes.  Mistaken  opin- 
ions are  seldom  free  from  a  moral  taint,  and  nobler 
men  would  have  given  Jesus  a  nobler  judgment 
than  His  disciples  uttered  when  they  fled  and  left 
Him  to  His  enemies.  The  ideal  which  Jesus 
aimed  at  was  an  ideal  distinctly  spiritual.  His  aim 
was  to  love  God  perfectly,  to  trust  God  entirely, 
to  annihilate  His  own  will  by  substituting  for  it  the 
will  of  God;  to  love  men  perfectly,  to  make  the 
bond  between  them  love  that  expresses  itself  in 
service.  So  far  as  He  was  judged  of  men  He 
failed,  as  we  have  seen.  Did  He  fail  in  some 
deeper,  truer  sense  ?  The  question  has  a  double 

n 


answer.  In  Jesus'  relation  to  God  He  succeeded. 
God  was  "with  him."  Nowhere  in  history  is  there 
a  life  w!  ose  deep  opinions  and  convictions  got  so 
perfect  an  embodiment  in  conduct.  Jesus  loved 
God  perfectly,  trusted  Him  entirely,  put  God's 
will  in  the  place  of  His  own.  Across  this  aspect  of 
His  life  there  falls  no  shadow.  He  is  the  bright, 
particular,  unqualified  success  in  the  annals  of  the 
spirit.  Faith  is  His  great  word,  and  faith  is  His 
great  attainment.  It  sharply  contrasts  Jesus  and 
all  men  whatsoever.  Jesus  was  not  given  to  won- 
dering, but  it  is  written  that  He  "  marvelled  be- 
cause of  their  unbelief."  "  How  is  it  that  ye  have 
no  faith  ?  "  He  asks  of  His  trembling  disciples. 
In  Jesus'  discipline  of  His  own  life  He  did  not 
fail. 

But  what  of  His  attempt  to  make  of  love  the 
bond  between  men — love  that  expresses  itself  in 
service  ?  Jesus  died  some  nineteen  hundred  years 
ago.  He  left  behind  Him  a  little  band  of  disap- 
pointed office-seekers.  With  His  death  vanished 
all  their  hope  of  political  preferment.  But  for  all 
their  disappointment  and  in  spite  of  their  failure 
to  understand  the  aims  of  their  Master,  they  had 

12 


for  Him  a  saving  personal  attachment.  In  some 
measure  they  had  caught  His  spirit,  and  when 
He  came  to  them  after  His  resurrection  and  sent 
them  forth  instructed  in  the  things  pertaining  to 
the  kingdom  of  God,  they  had  made  His  way 
their  way  —  the  way  of  love  that  expresses  itself 
in  service.  Over  a  large  part  of  the  earth  their 
teaching  has  gone.  Into  the  common  instruction 
of  youth  in  many  a  land  it  has  entered  as  staple  to 
that  instruction.  In  immeasurable  quantity,  so 
subtly  fused  is  it  with  other  things,  so  concealed 
is  it  under  various  forms,  that  teaching  has  spread 
through  the  wide  fabric  of  our  Western  life.  Our 
debt  to  it  is  incalculable  but  immense.  It  is  the 
fashion  of  leaven  to  work  slowly,  but  it  works* 
and  we  shall  not  say  that  it  has  failed  because  we 
find  so  much  of  the  lump  unleavened  still.  You 
go  and  look  at  the  awful  absorption  of  great 
administrative  abilities  in  the  personal  concerns 
of  their  own  particular  business;  or  you  note 
the  perversion  of  positions  of  great  trust  into  the 
selfish  scheming  of  self-seeking  men ;  or  you  ob- 
serve the  horrible  indifference  of  corporate  inter- 
ests to  public  honor  and  the  public  good ;  or  you 

J3 


stand  aghast  at  the  maddening  lust  for  gold,  and 
the  anarchy  that  inspires  the  wild  scramble  after 
it ;  and  it  seems  to  you  as  if  the  world  had  gone 
over  to  the  side  of  those  who  come  not  to  min- 
ister but  to  be  ministered  unto.  You  are  tempted 
to  believe  that  the  spirit  of  Jesus,  persuading  men 
to  love  one  another  and  to  serve  one  another,  has 
been  overwhelmed  like  a  voice  crying  in  the 
breaking,  rushing  surf.  In  a  weak  moment  you 
are  tempted  to  think  of  self  and  to  succeed  for 
self.  "  Success  "  is  the  cry  of  the  existing  order. 
A  successful  governor,  a  successful  lawyer,  a  suc- 
cessful engineer,  a  successful  merchant  —  there  is 
the  common  ambition  of  the  common  man.  And 
service  is  not  always  the  way  of  this  success. 
Dishonor,  and  a  hushed  conscience,  and  sharp 
practice,  and  a  turn  of  chance  has  brought  suc- 
cess in  the  world's  way  to  thousands,  and  the 
temptation  is  to  take  the  easy  road  to  success 
wherever  that  road  may  lie.  You  are  tempted 
to  take  it  with  the  rest.  And  the  answer  to  your 
mood  is  Jesus'  answer.  He  never  used  the  word 
"  success "  nor  any  word  akin  to  it.  He  never 
thought  the  thing  "success."    He  never  looked 


to  see  what  others  had  done,  or  what  others  pos- 
sessed, to  compare  Himself  with  them.  He  did 
not  seek  the  good  opinion  of  men,  for  He  knew 
that  opinions  change  for  trifling  cause,  and  that 
a  soul  cannot  intrust  its  happiness  to  men's  good 
opinion.  He  had  no  fear  of  failure  nor  to  be 
pointed  at  as  one  that  failed.  He  knew,  indeed, 
that  He  must  fail  if  human  life  should  ever  gain 
its  freedom  and  man's  place  rest  secure  below 
the  reach  of  changes  and  chances.  His  death 
was  the  sublimation  of  failure,  and  its  sanctifica- 
tion ;  and  since  He  died  and  rose  again,  failure  is 
the  inalienable  right  and  the  not  infrequent  duty 
of  noble  souls.  For  the  man  Christ  Jesus  stands 
for  the  Race,  and  what  is  legitimate  in  His  ex- 
perience is  legitimate  in  your  experience,  and 
what  is  possible  for  Him  is  possible  for  you. 
Over  and  over  again  in  the  long  human  story 
has  the  inalienable  right  of  failure  had  its  vindi- 
cation, because  always  there  is  something  that 
cannot  be  had  unless  one  dares  to  fail  —  some- 
thing as  deep  as  life,  and  as  real  as  the  soul,  and 
as  eternal  as  God  Himself.  You  can  see  it  at 
Thermopylae,  immortal  in  its  glorious  possession 

15 


of  three  hundred  simple  souls  that  dared  to  fail 
and  knew  inevitably  that  fail  they  must.  You 
can  see  it  in  the  Athenian  prison  where  Socrates 
the  aged  drained  the  poisoned  cup  and  smiled  at 
death,  and  failed  for  love  of  the  still  small  voice 
that  called  him  ever  to  the  divine  obedience. 
You  can  see  it  best  of  all  on  Calvary. 

The  spots  on  God's  earth  that  have  the  largest 
power  of  inspiration  are  not  the  fields  of  battles 
"  grandly  won,"  but  the  scenes  of  noble  failures : 
a  narrow  stretch  of  Grecian  beach,  a  cabined 
prison  room  in  Athens,  a  little  unmarked  mound 
without  the  city's  wall.  Into  such  soil  life's  no- 
blest inspirations  strike  their  roots.  The  secret 
of  it  is  not  hard  to  find.  The  failure  of  the  man 
who  nobly  fails  is  not  his  failure  but  another's. 
The  failure  of  Leonidas  is  Xerxes'  failure  and 
the  crash  of  all  that  Xerxes  stands  for.  The  fail- 
ure of  Socrates  is  the  failure  of  his  judges  and 
his  enemies  and  the  illiberal,  shallow  spirit  that 
in  them  lived.  The  failure  of  Jesus  is  not  His, 
but  the  failure  of  the  men  of  His  nation  and  His 
time  —  of  Judas  and  Peter  and  Annas  and  Pi- 
late and  the  rest.    Somehow  in  God's  economy 

16 


it  is  written  that  the  ignoble  failures  shall  come 
to  light  by  the  revealing  experience  of  heroic 
failures.  "  Except  a  corn  of  wheat  fall  into  the 
earth  and  die  it  abideth  alone,  but  if  it  die  it 
bringeth  forth  much  fruit."  What  the  world 
needs  to-day  is  the  old  need,  the  spirit  that  would 
serve  rather  than  the  spirit  that  would  succeed ; 
the  spirit  that  aims  at  something  far  beyond  the 
opinions  and  oppositions  of  men ;  the  spirit  that 
is  free  enough  to  fail  that  life  may  be  holier  and 
the  sweeter  made;  the  spirit  that  shone  down 
from  the  face  of  Jesus  —  the  deathless  hope  of  it, 
the  glorious  victory  of  it  —  over  the  dark  cross 
until  it  touched  the  hard  faces  of  those  four  exe- 
cutioners as  "  they  sat  and  watched  Him  there." 
Beloved  of  Christ  Church,  —  beloved  still, 
howe'er  the  years  may  pass,  loved  with  a  love 
that  time  is  powerless  to  dim  or  change,1  it 
would  be  unfortunate  indeed  if  the  word  so 
often  uttered  here  to-night  should  sink  unquali- 
fied into  your  thoughts,  unqualified  of  Christ. 

1  Instead  of  these  words  of  address  at  Christ  Church,  were 
the  words,  Gentlemen  of  the  Graduating  Class,  in  the  Bac- 
calaureate Sermon. 

17 


i 
It  is  Christ's  failure  that  I  bid  you  watch,  it  is 

Christ's  failure  that  I  bid  you  dare,  it  is  the  en- 
nobling and  enriching  of  life  through  failure  such 
as  His  that  I  urge  you  to  consider.  Love  God 
as  Jesus  loved  God;  trust  in  God  as  did  Jesus; 
surrender  your  will  to  God's  will  as  Jesus  sur- 
rendered His,  and  so  far  succeed  in  the  noble 
mastery  of  self.  But  in  every  relation  of  life 
among  men,  seek  to  make  of  love  the  bond  — 
love  that  expresses  itself  in  service.  If  honor 
and  power  and  wealth  and  high  consideration 
are  yours,  see  that  they  are  the  incidents  of  a 
career  of  usefulness.  If  obscurity  and  poverty 
and  the  common  lot  are  yours,  remember  that 
these,  too,  are  incidents  in  a  life  inspired  —  in- 
cidents and  accidents  not  mattering  over  much, 
and  never  to  be  weighed  against  a  love  that  ex- 
presses itself  in  service.  Bring  to  your  home 
and  town  and  land  the  new  and  redeeming  de- 
votion for  which  they  wait  and  yearn  and  suffer, 
and  so  help  to  fill  the  whole  earth  with  the  know- 
ledge of  God  "as  the  waters  cover  the  sea." 
And  if  at  times  the  struggle  seems  too  hard,  and 
the  end  remote,  and  the  task  thankless,  and  the 

18 


worth  of  it  doubtful,  go  look  into  the  face  of 
Christ,  and  the  yoke  will  be  easy  and  the  burden 
light.    Let  us  pray. 

Father,  we  thank  Thee  for  the  perfect  love  of 
Thy  blessed  Son  ;  for  His  perfeet  trust  in  Thee ; 
for  His  utter  surrender  of  his  His  will  to  Thine. 
But  chiefly  are  we  bound  to  thank  Thee  for  His 
failure,  too,  in  order  that  something  nobler  than 
success  may  live  and  thrive  and  bloom  forever 
in  the  seamed  walls  of  our  so  rugged  life.  Keep 
us,  we  beseech  Thee,  from  the  awful  heresy  of 
"  success,"  and  teach  us  day  by  day  the  beauty 
and  the  power  of  service.  Not  a  few  of  those 
assembled  here  are  girding  sword  to  thigh  for 
life's  long  battle.  By  the  hallowing  power  of 
their  entire  devotion  make  the  places  in  which 
they  stand  to  fight  glorious  and  holy  with  love's 
sacrifice,  whether  to  the  shallow  minds  of  men 
they  lose  or  win  the  battle.  May  they  nobly  vin- 
dicate their  right  to  fail  for  the  success  of  lofty 
issues.  Lift  their  eyes  above  the  darkness  and 
the  cross,  until  in  Jesus'  face  they  see  the  light 
and  power  and  destiny  that  well  becomes  a  Son 
of  God,  Whose  sons  they  are.  For  Christ's  sweet 
sake  we  ask  it.    Amen. 


(C&e  ffitoerjribe  $vt& 

PRINTED  BY  H.  O.  HOUGHTON  &  CO. 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASS. 

U.S.A. 


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